If you you’ve read posts here before you know we love to travel and more importantly love to scuba dive. This year we did something a little different. This year we celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary with a 16 day trip to Italy. We share our aniversary date with some friends, and they too were crossing a mile stone (20 years), so we put a trip together.
If you know me, I have a bit of a reputation for ‘unfiltered feedback’. Italy is one of those dream vacation destinations. There’s so much amazing stuff in one little country. Mountains to the north, fantastic mountain towns on the sea in the south. And oh, so much history. It’s impossible to see it all in 16 days. We also like to avoid crowds and ‘touristy’ places when ever possible. So there’s no Rome in this trip, no downtown Florence, or Naples outside of transiting through it., though we did hit Venice. Our friends have been Italy a few times so while leaned on their prior expertise as we coordinated in planning. It was also their trip too so there were locations they absolutely wanted to hit. I’m going to break this down into two posts. This one that’s commentary about the trip, do’s and don’ts if you’re going to Italy to visit any of the places we visited, and a post that reviews the places we stayed and some restaraunts.
We learned a lot on this trip. Prior to it, I had many conversations with co-workers, friends, and even some family that had visited Italy. We were amped up and geared up for fantastic sights, and food. “Oh the food”, we were told, every meal is fantastic, you can’t go wrong in Italy. The food is so fresh, so simple, made simple ingredients, and is otherworldly. Well… that’s not always the case.
We had a grand plan; start in the north east, in Venice, a few days there, then head west to Stresa, on Lago Maggiore. Spend a few days there, then head south toward the Amalfi coast. We chose a farm resort stay south of Florence, north of Chianti (Salvadonica, specifcally). We planned high end stays in Venice, a high end hotel in Stressa. A medium to upper end stay at Salvadonica. Lastly we chose a VRBO experience in Massa Lubrense, south of Sorento. It also wasn’t a ‘budget stay’, and we chose this location for access to things in and around the Amalfi coast we wanted to see and experience.